No two workplaces are the same just as no two teams are the same.
The stressors facing a ten-person remote creative agency look nothing like those of a thirty-person professional services firm navigating a leadership change. A team in recovery from a culture of mistrust needs something fundamentally different from a high-performing team that’s running fast. Many wellbeing benefits are unfortunately designed as a one size fits all pants.
The EAP is perhaps the most common example. Around 88% of UK employers and 73% of US employers offer one, which means the vast majority of employees technically have access to mental health support. And yet research shows that only 3 to 5% of employees ever use them, with some organisations reporting utilisation as low as 1%.1,2 The support is available but people are not using it.
Wellbeing budgets are being used up in that gap between what is available and what is truly working for the team.
This post is about closing that gap by being more intentional about what your team needs and building or choosing support that fits that reality.
Start by diagnosing before you prescribe
The most common mistake is buying a wellbeing solution before you’ve understood the problem.
A team dealing with unresolved resentment and distrust won’t be helped by a meditation app. A team struggling with unclear roles and an unsustainable workload won’t recover through workshops alone. Adding a benefit on top of an unaddressed cultural issue is a bit like putting a plaster over something that needs stitches.
Before choosing any kind of support, ask yourself: what is actually going on here? Is this burnout, or is it disengagement? Is it stress, or is it resentment? Are people struggling with their individual capacity, or is something else going on in the way the team works together?
You don’t need a consultant to answer these questions. A simple, anonymous pulse survey or a frank conversation in a small group is enough to surface what’s really there. Before you make decisions, you need to understand what you’re trying to fix.
Ask your people what would help
A lot of the time, people know what they need.
Surveys, polls, anonymous feedback forms, or even informal conversations during team meetings can tell you more about what support would be used than any industry benchmark. And the act of asking sends a message that people’s experience matters here, and that you’re trying to get this right.
A word of caution, though. Asking for feedback creates an expectation that something will follow. Research by Great Place to Work found that asking for feedback and doing nothing with it is worse than not asking at all.3 It sends a message that voices don’t matter and over time that erodes the trust you were trying to build in the first place. Even a small visible response (“we heard this, and here’s what we’re doing”) can go a long way.
If you get feedback you’re not yet able to act on, be honest about it rather than saying nothing at all.
Think about the kind of support your team actually needs
Not every team needs the same thing, and not every budget stretches to a full programme. Here’s a range of options across different contexts and needs:
If your team is remote, consider services that meet people where they are. Remote counselling services, digital wellbeing platforms, or confidential 1:1 coaching delivered virtually means having access to support no matter where you find yourself. Apps can work well as an accessible, low-commitment starting point for some teams, though they work better as a complement to human support.
If your team is navigating trust issues or a difficult culture, the honest conversation needs to happen before the programme is launched. A wellbeing initiative in an environment where people don’t feel psychologically safe will go unused for exactly the same reasons EAPs do: people aren’t going to be vulnerable in a space they don’t trust. Building psychological safety should come first in this case.
If you want a more tailored starting point, consider bringing in a wellbeing expert to spend time with your organisation before making any decisions. The wellbeing expert should be there to listen and observe. To understand how your team operates, where the pressure points are and what kind of support would be most beneficial and worth the financial investment. The recommendations that follow that process tend to fit the context in a way that generic packages simply cannot.
If the budget is limited, structural changes can carry more impact than programmes. Reviewing workloads and role clarity, for example, can remove sources of chronic stress that no amount of coaching or counselling will fully address. Flexible leave policies, normalising mental health days, and ensuring people feel covered when they take time off to rest, matter to people.
If you want something internal, peer support or trained mental health first aiders can be a valuable complement to external support. These are colleagues trained to recognise early signs of distress and to signpost appropriate help. They don’t replace professional support, but they lower the threshold for someone who isn’t ready to reach out to a stranger.
Create feedback routes, and be clear about what they’re for
Climate check-ins and team feedback mechanisms are useful, but only if the people running them are prepared for honest and critical feedback. A feedback route that produces uncomfortable truths and then goes quiet can create resentment and distrust.
Nearly half of employees cite psychological safety and trust as their top reason for not providing feedback, with broken promises and lack of follow-through among the primary drivers of their reluctance.4 If that’s the environment you’re working in, a survey or climate meeting shouldn’t be the first step. You’re going to have to rebuild enough trust to ensure their responses are authentic and constructive.
If you do run climate check-ins, the most important thing you can offer afterwards is a response. Share what you heard. Name what you can and can’t change, and say so plainly. Transparency about limitations is a simple way to build trust.
Model the behaviours you want to see
No benefit programme will land in a culture where leadership’s own behaviour contradicts it.
The most accessible wellbeing intervention available to any leader costs nothing: taking your own leave visibly, respecting working hours in your own communication, and talking about your own experience of pressure in appropriate ways. These signals shape the behaviour of your team.
Before you commit, try something small
One of the practical things you can do before investing in a full programme is to pilot something first. A 12-week engagement, a small cohort, a single team trying a new form of support before it’s rolled out more widely. The data from a pilot, what got used, what changed, what people said, will be more valuable than a promise made by a vendor.
It also removes the all-or-nothing pressure from the decision. You don’t have to get it perfectly right from the start. You just have to be willing to learn, adjust, and ask again.
The truth about wellbeing benefits
A wellbeing benefit, however well-designed, can only do so much. It can support individuals in building resilience, developing practical skills, and feeling less alone in what they’re carrying. What it can’t do is fix a culture that’s structurally unsound, repair trust that leadership hasn’t invested in rebuilding, or compensate indefinitely for workloads that are simply too much.
The most effective wellbeing strategies work at both levels: addressing the conditions people are working in, and supporting the people working in them. One without the other will produce the same result: a benefit that looks good on paper but is not used by the people who need it.
Your team deserves better than that. And so does your investment.
Still Willows provides confidential mental wellness coaching for small teams, tailored to where your team actually is. If you’re thinking about what meaningful wellbeing support could look like for your organisation, we’d love to hear from you.
References
- HCML / Personnel Today. (2024). Take-up of EAPs as low as 3%, with a quarter unaware they exist. personneltoday.com
- Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA). (2023). Cited in: Meditopia for Work. EAP Statistics and Utilization Rates in 2025. meditopia.com
- Great Place to Work Canada. (2026). The Power of Listening: How Employee Feedback Drives Culture and Trust. greatplacetowork.ca
- Radical Candor / HCA Magazine. (2026). How can HR fix a broken culture of feedback at work? hcamag.com
- Long, T. (2024). Why are employee assistance programmes under-utilised and marginalised and how to address it? A critical review and a labour process analysis. Human Resource Management Journal, 34(4), 1134–1153. doi.org